Re: Kindness

[Andy Askey <askeya@res.raytheon.com>]

Robert,

Thanx for your response and I am glad to hear that proper SW reuse is
being taught today.  (This was taboo when I was in school 15 years
ago.)  One idea to stop "cheating" is for the professors to come up with
a unique problem for each class.  This may cause more work for the
instructor, but I think the final project may be more useful to the
student in the long run.

Andy Askey

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> Andy, reread the thread, I think you will find that people
> basically agree with you. It is fine if you have a problem
> to ask for help, it is not fine to ask someone else to do
> your work for you, and then claim it as your own.
> 
> In fact when I teach CS courses, I explain at the start
> that it is just fine to borrow code from anywhere, under
> any circumstances *PROVIDING THAT* proper credit is given,
> and I note that if the top of your assignment says "this
> was written entirely by so-and-so who helped me out", that
> this is not cheating, but you won't get much credit.
> 
> The one and ONLY offence is plagiarism, which is copying
> without attribution. This is not acceptable even when you
> have a "real" job. If a coworker writes a chunk of code
> for you, then that coworker should get proper credit.
> 
> In fact the best thing to do when a student asks for help,
> especially if the student makes it clear that he understands
> that this is what is reasonable to ask for, is to point the
> student in the right direction to learn.
> 
> Remember that when a professor gives out an assignment in a
> CS course, the assignment is NOT to turn in a program that
> does XYZ, it is to *learn* how to write a program that does
> XYZ, and I think we all understand that doing things yourself
> is an essential part of learning.
> 
> Would you hire someone who had never written a program, but
> had instead got someone on CLA to write all their programs
> for them? I doubt it, because while you may be able to persuade
> someone to write a simple program for you, you don't see people
> posting here the specs for a complex project and expecting
> people to do it for them.
> 
> As for the net being different from books, it is not. If what
> you do is to point people to appropriate net resources, that's
> just fine, and we often try to do that. But if you do someone's
> work for them, that's not at all equivalent to a book!
> 
> I think competent students understand the difference without
> any difficulty.
> 
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

-- 
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|                 Andy Askey                      |
|              Software Engineer                  |
|           Raytheon Systems Company              |
|   670 Discovery Drive, Huntsville, AL  35806    |
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|        andrew_j_askey@res.raytheon.com          |
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